Make it FutureFit: four ways to design better adult learning

Adult learning practitioners strive to help those they work with to thrive and achieve their ambitions. Understanding how best to do this is not always straightforward. We are often told that advancements in technology, climate change, increased migration and other significant cultural shifts will render the skills we are learning today redundant in a matter of years. This means that preparing adults for the future is perhaps more complex than ever. Adults need to learn throughout their lives if they wish to adapt to the shifts we're experiencing. Our research shows that there are well...  [+] Show more

Adult learning practitioners strive to help those they work with to thrive and achieve their ambitions. Understanding how best to do this is not always straightforward. We are often told that advancements in technology, climate change, increased migration and other significant cultural shifts will render the skills we are learning today redundant in a matter of years. This means that preparing adults for the future is perhaps more complex than ever. Adults need to learn throughout their lives if they wish to adapt to the shifts we're experiencing. Our research shows that there are well known barriers that prevent this from happening: lack of time and cost; lack of access to high quality training; limited guidance on what type of training to do; and a lack of belief and motivation to get involved in training in the first place. Adult learning has its own specific challenges, requiring specific approaches suited to the unique time we are living in. With fifty-four per cent of all employees requiring extensive upskilling or reskilling by 2022, the need for high quality, effective adult learning experiences is increasingly pressing. In this guide we hope to provide some guidance in two respects. Firstly, to outline key principles or ingredients that are known to be effective in the design of adult learning experiences. Secondly, and more crucially, to provide specific examples of these principles in practice from initiatives that are applying them today.

Excerpt from publication.